I wrote five poems called 'Without Me' over the course of a relationship which ended for a few years when I was living away from Belfast. And this is the final one, the kind of 'coming to terms' with it.

Without Me

 

Once, in the hiatus of a difficult July,
down Eskra’s lorryless roads from sweet fuck all,
we were flinging – such young sophisticates – like a giant frisbee
this plastic lid of an old rat poison bin.

We were flinging it from you to me, me to you, you to me;
me-you, you-me, me-you, you back again.
And you would have sworn that its flat arc was a pendulum,
compassing Tyrone’s prosey horizon.

And I would have sworn that our throw and catch had such momentum
that its rhythm might survive, somehow, without me.

from These Days (Jonathan Cape, 2004), © Leontia Flynn 2004, used by permission of the author and the publisher.

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